Iron Cove Bridge

This week I started the Camera Craft 3 course at the ACP. The focus for this first week was landscape and architecture, so are well as looking at general compositional styles, we covered hyperfocal distance (maximising Depth of Field) and ‘exposing to the right‘ (minimising noise). The previous material I’d read about hyperfocal distance was quite technical, so I hadn’t grasped how easy it is to get everything in focus. The trick is to remember DoF goes from one third the distance in of the focus point and two thirds behind. So focusing on infinity wastes that two thirds of the focal plane. The rule of thumb is to aim for a third of the way into the area you want in focus.

Another nice tip I picked up was that most lenses’ ‘sweet point’ is about 2-3 stops back from the max aperture, e.g. f8 or f11. So this is the ideal for shooting landscapes as it minimises lens aberation etc.

The assignment I’ve chosen this week is to shoot one subject with one body and lens. The latter is easy enough: that’s all I’ve got at the moment! The subject I chose was Iron Cove Bridge. Not the prettiest structure around, but it’s currently going through growing pains, and is about to get a conjoined twin.